Something More Than Human
by Devin Bach
Summary: If you like Highlander or any of the immortal series, you might like this. Its about a character I created...one lonely night when I was out of things to write. Meet Warren Carter, Irishman from the year 1475, walking the streets of New York. This was an
1. Prologue

….  
  
My name is Warren Carter. I was born in 1475 in a small town in Ireland, which no longer exists. Its name doesn't matter. The fact that I am of Irish descent does not matter. What matter is that in 1495, I was killed.  
  
That's right. I was dead. I'm better now.  
  
Not that it took me until today (which is March the 9th, in the year of our Lord anno domini 2000, for reference) to reach the point of being "better." I was quite dead for about… two hours. After laying in a pile of muck and hay for a bit longer than I'm used to, I realized that I was no longer bleeding. Nor was I at all deceased.  
  
I was, and am, very much alive. I am immortal.  
  
Now, I know what you're thinking. This is crazy. That only happens on television. Freaks and psychos think they're immortal. I'm telling you that I am neither. I can have any number of people attest that I am of sound mind, and all of them were born in the last century, not in some far off land in some distant time. I am ageless. That doesn't mean I don't bleed. I cry. I hurt. I live. I am just like the rest of you. I simply cannot die.  
  
If you don't believe, that is alright by me. The less of you that believe, the better for us. I say us, because I am not the only one. We are legion. There are probably as many immortals in this world as there are real psychics, but we exist. And we don't run around living pointless, eternal lives that have some incredibly dark and secret purpose. We live and walk among you with the greatest secret ever known tucked into our bodies. We are the walking fountain of youth. And for that reason, we have been pursued throughout the ages. Forced to hide among you. To live in secret, and pretend that we hurt, and die along side you. Fine. We'll get by. But that doesn't mean we don't care. We're human, just like you. You may hate us, you may hunt us, and you may run us all down, or you may not even ever know we exist. But we will go on. We will always go on.  
  
1 Warren Carter 


	2. Living from day to day...

Bordeaux, France, Western Europe  
  
7 February 2002  
  
2:44 A.M.  
  
Warren Carter stepped out into the streets of Bordeaux, France. Bored, tired, and cold, he trudged solemnly back to his hotel from the bar he had just exited. Five pints of hard liquor and three hours later, he was barely soused. Still, the alcohol did little to warm his spirit. Life was getting…boring. Quite frankly, he was tired of it: the running, the hiding, the constant fighting. But that wasn't the boring part.  
  
Nothing surprised him anymore. No one surprised him. He tried to enjoy life, he really did…but without her…  
  
Carter sighed. "Mother of God," he muttered to himself. "Why did she have to die?"  
  
His mind flashed back to three weeks prior. The love of his immortal life, lying in a hospital bed, silent, motionless. His own battered and exhausted form slumped in a chair next to her, sleeping restlessly, praying to God that she would wake up, that she might say something. His mind flitted again to two days before that, when the two of them had been found on a deserted highway, their car destroyed beyond recognition, her body flung out into the dirt, broken and bleeding. He had been thrown clear as well from the crash, but as usual…  
  
He looked up, an unwelcome feeling pricking his senses. Narrowing his eyes he scanned the side street he was passing, then looked behind him. Nothing. Turning around to look in front of him once more, he spotted a figure standing about twenty yards ahead, sword in hand, waiting. Carter rolled his eyes.  
  
"It's going to be a long night."  
  
  
  
The lingering effects of the quickening had driven all sense of dullness from the alcohol away from him. Angry and tense, Carter had stalked back to his hotel, put his sword into it's case and immediately booked a flight home. He didn't care that it would look suspicious if the police came to ask him about the corpse of a headless man from Ulster lying in the street a mile from his hotel. He was tired of this. Tired of the Game. Tired of losing the people he cared about. For the first time in over sixty years, as he fell asleep under the influence of alcohol and sleeping pills, he dreamed of home. Not his loft in New York, or his flat in Seattle. His real home. Eire. Ireland. 


	3. The Past (1)

A farmhouse on the northern shore, Ireland  
  
Spring, 1495  
  
Early evening  
  
Warren Carter, foundling son of Jon Reilly Carter, walked from the garden of his home to see if his aging foster father was asleep by the fire or waiting to scold him for being out with Mary Catherine Walsh again. At the robust age of twenty, he didn't truly care what his father had to say on the matter unless it was his blessing to marry the girl, but he would listen anyway, as all good lads do for their fathers. Checking the rain barrel as he passed, he noted the smell of roast mutton, a rarity in his home. They must have a guest.  
  
Warren frowned. His father did not often have guests, and the man was mistrustful of strangers. Taking a last look over the ocean before he went in, he saw storm clouds. A gust of wind danced leaves and grass about his feet. He felt tense, without knowing why.  
  
"Father?" He walked in, expecting to see the old Irishman with ale and mutton laid out, and the usual look on his face, but his father was waiting alone, the mutton cooked, ale out, and no guest. Warren immediately began to worry.  
  
"Father if it's about Mary Walsh I can expl---."  
  
"Sit down, boy. Eat."  
  
Without another word, Warren sat down, and dug in, slowly at first waiting for the torrent of words he expected to come. It did not. For many long minutes they ate in silence.  
  
"Warren."  
  
He looked up, noting that the old man was not frowning, but neither was he smiling.  
  
"Yes, Father?"  
  
"I've kept you with me these twenty years, though you were a foundling. I've treated you as my son." A moment of awkward silence followed. "I… want you to know something." Warren wiped his mouth on his arm, and waited. His father had never been like this before. "We both know that, though you're as normal as any man I've met, you're…different. That God made you a bit off …from what he usually builds us."  
  
Warren frowned. This was the strangest talk he'd ever had. And coming from his own father, he'd never expected the devout old man to say things like this. "Today, a man came by, looking for you. Well dressed, fair spoken. Said it was 'most important that he find you' before some other lout does." Jon Carter looked down, obviously having trouble dealing with what he was about to say. "He said …that you were being hunted down by the Devil himself."  
  
Warren burst out laughing. All that tension for a joke like this. But then, then pious old Jon Carter had never been much of a practical joker… Settling himself, he waited for the old man to stop frowning and continue.  
  
"It's no laughing matter, Warren. What've you done that the Devil would come after you for? Speak, boy!"  
  
Warren blinked. Hard. The old man wasn't joking at all, was dead serious. "I've done nothing, Father."  
  
"Please, son… tell me."  
  
"Father, I've done nothing!"  
  
They yelled back and forth for a moment, old Carter trying to get his son to confess to something worthy of the Devil's personal attention. It dragged on and seemed to be finally slowing down, when suddenly, the simple wooden door burst into splinters, followed by a smiling, roaring black knight. Warren and Jon Carter both jumped back, overturning the table into the giant's path as they scrambled to get away.  
  
"Warren Carter!" The smiling, sickening giant announced.  
  
"There's no Carter here!" Warren's father cried out. "Get away, Devil!"  
  
The black knight swung his massive broadsword, tearing through the wall and coming to rest only when it had completed a full circle around him, smashing crockery and stone alike. Laughing wickedly, the giant crooned. "Little Irish boy! I've found you! And now you're going to die!"  
  
Jon Carter was no firm believer in the new ways of Christianity, but he knew a fiend when he saw one. He grabbed up a mattock and rushed the black knight. "You stay away from my son!"  
  
Then, in a moment that burned itself into the darkest recesses of Warren Carter's mind, the great sword flashed about and ended his father's life horribly. The old man screamed, but it was a wordless scream, lost in Warren's mind and it had no real sound to it that Warren could tell. Rage almost over took him, but the grief and shock sent him to his knees. Another voice came, and more violence, but he paid it no mind, sitting there in a stupor. The voice was English, and the sounds were swords.  
  
"Kurgan!"  
  
"Grayham Ashe! Where is your snobbish student? Off with another woman?"  
  
"Impeccable as always, slime." The English voice was far too cheerful for its words.  
  
"I've prepared the way for another, and this one will survive you, as well!"  
  
"I think not!" The Kurgan roared, his wicked broadsword darting out and striking hard against the steel wielded by Ashe. The fight was soon carried outside. Lightning rumbled and rain came. Warren picked up the simple axe by the ruined door and dashed out into the storm. The swordplay had stopped, and another figure had joined the fray but as a hostage, not a combatant. Warren recognized her in an instant.  
  
"Mary!" He rushed the Kurgan, only to be stopped by Ashe.  
  
"Wait, not like that!" The girl screamed as the Englishman spoke. She must've followed him home in hopes of helping him talk to his father about them getting married.  
  
"Warren!" The Kurgan held her in front of him as a shield, barring her from moving.  
  
The giant developed a sickening smile. "Your woman, boy? Good."  
  
With one swift stroke, the Kurgan had beheaded her, ending her screaming. At that moment, something inside Warren snapped. He flung the axe at the Kurgan full force, and grabbed Ashe's sword from his hands. The Kurgan blocked the axe with ease, but was unprepared for the flurry of furious strikes the young Irishman was raining down on him. Slowly but surely, Warren was losing the fight, as the Kurgan beat him back, step by step, stroke by stroke. With an almost uncharacteristic flourish, the Kurgan disarmed him, and smiled. And promptly ran him through.  
  
Warren tried to scream. He tried to do anything. But the leaden pain in him would not allow it, and he knew that he was dying. "That's alright," he thought to himself. "I'll see Mary soon. I'll see my father." His last conscious memories were of the Englishman named Ashe taking the sword back and driving the giant over the cliff with an even more furious onslaught. Ashe shouted something in a language that Warren did not understand, and the he felt the Englishman bending over him as the darkness claimed him. 


	4. The Past (2) (Incomplete...)

Off-shore, Ireland  
  
One day later, 1495  
  
Warren sat up, jerking awake and gasping for breath. He yanked the sheet covering him down, looked around in confusion. "B-but… the farm, that man,…" he sputtered.  
  
He stood, walked to the doorway of the room. It was unfamiliar. The wooden doorway was of a different, far better craftsmanship than the one that had been the door to his home.  
  
The he remembered. His home had been destroyed. Shapes in his memory stirred, the dark figure killing Mary, the Englishman pulling him away from the cliff, a bolt of lightning striking the house as he was carried away, setting what was left of it ablaze.  
  
His father. His lover. Everything. Gone.  
  
He leaned against the doorpost, grief over taking him. Suddenly the floor shifted, pitching him forward onto the wooden boards. He began to feel nauseous as the floor tilted again, to the other side this time.  
  
"Feeling alright there, lad?" 


End file.
